“All Men are Created Equal”: A 247 Year Old Paradox

As many of you have come to know, my love of history has often determined a general direction for our travels. We knew we wanted to head for the southeast once again in Season 3, and doing so was going to take us through Virginia. We only spent a short period of time in Virginia in Season 1, primarily visiting a few coastal places while visiting my uncle in North Carolina. We actually only stayed one night in “Old Dominion” with the RV. This time we decided to visit Virginia a little longer but away from the coastal areas.

Virginia is an absolute treasure trove to a history lover, and we would need to visit this beautiful state for quite a while to see all the phenomenal historical sites available. I didn’t even attempt to try pulling that off on this trip. We will need to visit Virginia again, and likely several times to see everything historical there is to see. Don’t tell Misty or she may never let us go through Virginia again!

As we were planning the areas we could visit (and that actually had available RV parks), one region east of the Shenandoah Valley and Blue Ridge Mountains immediately became apparent to me. That place is the home of one of America’s most famous Founding Fathers. He himself was the architect of the home which took 40 years to complete. It’s near Charlottesville, the location of the University of Virginia. This man happens to be the founding father of UVA. He was an elected member of Virginia’s legislative body, the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg. He was a Virginia delegate to the second Continental Congress during the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. He was Virginia’s Governor during the Revolution, the Minister to France after the war, and was appointed as the first Secretary of State under George Washington’s presidency. He then served as Vice-President under John Adams, after which he was elected third President of the United States for two terms.

As prestigious as all of these accomplishments are, however, his greatest claim to fame is as the author of one of the greatest documents ever recorded in human history, a document that has stirred hearts and minds with the idea of freedom since 1776. This is the man who wrote The Declaration of Independence. To my delight, we visited Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. (https://www.monticello.org/)

This entire region of Virginia is absolutely beautiful. I highly recommend visiting if you’ve never done so. Monticello, located up on a mountain, is no exception. Jefferson inherited the land from his father, it was a place he visited regularly as a boy. When his father asked what portion of the family land, he wanted for his inheritance he quickly requested Monticello. There is a commanding view, one can see for 60 miles toward the east, south, and west.

There was a downside to the location we learned since farming was the primary industry for Jefferson and his contemporaries. A mountain top is not the ideal place to farm. This did not deter Jefferson as he also inherited other land from both his father and father-in-law in the lower locations below Monticello. He actually owned several plantations with the majority of cash crops (wheat being the most lucrative) being grown on those properties not on the mountain. The primary agriculture conducted at Monticello was in the form of experimental gardening. The gardens are still there and are still actively worked by The Thomas Jefferson Foundation which owns and operates Monticello today. Misty and I very much enjoyed walking along the terraced ground with neatly organized, well-tended plots, some in full growth, and some which had the soil recently turned over in preparation. Most of the plots were labeled with small stakes identifying the crop being grown and the year Jefferson first introduced them to the garden. The years covered the last decades of the 1700’s and the early decades of the 1800’s. While Misty took in the beauty (and many awesome photo ops), I found great pleasure in reading some of the markers and the years listed. Who knew artichokes would’ve been grown in Virginia in the 1700’s!

As mentioned earlier, the house was built over a period of 40 years. Some of this was due to Jefferson’s infatuation with architecture and engineering, but also due to the fact that Jefferson spent a significant amount of time away from Monticello in public service. We signed up for a self-guided tour which was set for a scheduled time and took about 30-45 minutes depending on your own pace. The tour we took was only for the first level. There are also guided tours available which would have included the upper floors of the private living quarters.

Thomas Jefferson was in some ways a man ahead of his time since he was very much interested in new ideas and inventions. He collected many of the time periods latest inventions as well as artifacts, curiosities, books, and portraits. Many of his collections, including his personal library, are on display as you make your way through the rooms. As someone who loves to read, it was pretty cool to look upon books personally owned and read by Jefferson albeit behind protective plexiglass. I understand they’d be apt to fall apart if someone carelessly touched them.

After leaving the house, we had the opportunity to visit the “basement” areas which included storerooms, wine cellars (he was an avid wine collector), a beer cellar, and an area that was the “crossroad” so to speak, of the different “worlds” existing at Monticello. This brings me to an element of Jefferson, his life, and his home that creates the paradox mentioned in the title of this piece.

Yes, Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence. He is the man who penned the words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.

Never in human history had anyone publicly made any statements such as these. This was a unique and powerful claim of human dignity, and it has impacted millions around the world to this day. Other peoples and other nations have looked to, borrowed from, and found inspiration, to voice the same claim in their own freedom seeking efforts. The Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY in fact drew on Jeffersons words from this declaration in their call for equal rights. Even Abraham Lincoln referenced these words in his Gettysburg Address. But there is the kicker. When Jefferson penned these words, turned them over to the Continental Congress, placed his signature on it alongside the other delegates, and served his new nation during its conflict for independence from Great Britain, there were several groups in American society who were not actually covered by this idea of equality and independence. Women were not accorded this equality, and neither were people of African descent who were horribly enslaved. This man, Thomas Jefferson, who believed in what he wrote, was a slaveholder himself. (https://www.monticello.org/slavery/)

When we first arrived at Monticello and got off the shuttle bus that carried us to the mountain home, we knew we had time before our scheduled tour of the house. There was another tour scheduled to take place addressing the slavery which was a way of life on all of Jefferson’s plantations. In line with our desire to be better informed about the truth and history of slavery in America, we did not hesitate to head over to the location where this tour would begin. The woman who conducted the tour, gave us the background of slavery under Jefferson and led us along Mulberry Row, the stretch of land on the southside of the property where the slave quarters and various workshops had been. Most of the buildings are gone but it is known where they were and what they were used for such as the stable, blacksmith shop, etc. Several buildings have been reconstructed or restored to the original design known from historical records and archeological evidence. The reconstructed Heming family quarters contained glass windows. Our guide pointed this out, stating if there had not been record of the windows being glass, they would not have put them in. There were records however of the windows being glass, so glass there was to see.

As we walked along Mulberry Row, listening to the accounts of slave life and the stories of individual slaves and of individual families living and working at Monticello, we felt the profound sadness that counteracts the beauty of the house, grounds, and countryside. In many ways, Thomas Jefferson was not a good man. Slaves who tried to run away or caused too much trouble were beaten at his orders as was common with any slaveowner. In fact, Jefferson employed a white overseer who was known to be especially vicious with a whip. One of the stories we heard was of a man who had attempted to run away a few too many times leading to his being beaten in front of the entire gathering of slaves. Yet, “all men are created equal”?

That is what is complicated and contradictory about Thomas Jefferson. He himself expressed a belief that slavery was inherently wrong. He apparently desired a way to bring an end to slavery, but in his lifetime could never come to terms with how to do it. And he himself only freed a total of 10 slaves even though he had the ability to do so and owned between 100 to 160 slaves at any given time. Why didn’t he do more if he truly believed it was wrong, and truly believed in what he expressed in the Declaration? Why did he mistreat fellow human beings in such horrible ways? Why did he leave this problem for future generations to deal with, ultimately through a bloody Civil War? Since most of Jefferson’s colleagues and friends, James Madison (who lived only about 30 miles away), James Monroe, and George Washington also were slaveowners, there weren’t many who dared speak against the lifestyle he lived. Even John Adams from Boston was a friend, but if he ever said anything, it’s unknown. Not to mention, Adams was a political rival from an opposing party so Jefferson likely wouldn’t have given it much credit anyway. (An interesting side fact: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died within hours of each other on July 4^th, 1826. Exactly 50 years to the day after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence created the United States).

We learned the only man who is known to have ever taken him to task about the dilemma of his beliefs on equality versus his lifestyle of slave ownership was another hero of the American Revolution. This man was a good friend of Jefferson’s, but he was in fact, not an American. Only the Marquis de Lafayette of France, in visiting Jefferson on his return tour of the United States in 1824, had the courage to call him out on the discrepancy. I’m not sure how Jefferson responded to Lafayette but clearly there was no real impact. In my heart, I hope the words of truth at least stung because I do respect the service Jefferson gave to America and the powerful words he gave to the world. In the same breath, it’s difficult to honor the man who enslaved and mistreated other human beings simply because it supported the way of life he wished to enjoy.

In closing, there were two experiences during our Slavery Tour of Monticello which were touching to us. As the woman who was conducting the tour completed her time with us, she grew very emotional. She had learned many of the details of actual enslaved people under Jefferson. She has also met descendants of slave families who had lived and worked at Monticello. She knows their stories. It is a personal work she is doing in sharing what she has learned (and is still learning) with Monticello’s visitors. She clearly sees the paradox which is Thomas Jefferson, and she feels the sorrow of lives who struggled and suffered merely for the benefit of his home. The other experience is a memorial site at the end of Mulberry Row. This site is meant for quiet contemplation and includes a steel wall containing the names of 607 enslaved people who existed at Monticello during the years it was owned by Jefferson. Misty and I took the opportunity to reflect on the people recorded there. It was an emotional experience for me as I looked over those names and considered the decades of injustice represented there. It reinforces for me what I believe history is all about – to remember the truth of what was, so we can strive for something better to ensure it will never ever happen again.